The Trillium Schoolyard Project is an ongoing effort to create a built environment that is safe, inviting and “resilient by design,” that is best suited to the flourishing of human community and ecological systems. To build community power around this cause, we want to make a big splash, with a small splash of color. So, we asked art students to create colorful designs that can be painted on the blacktop. One of three blacktop mural design finalists will be installed. Students at every K-12 level will have the opportunity to paint or participate in less-intensive projects, like planting or sign-making. The next day, we will open our schoolyard to the community at-large, in celebration of our block. Our adjacent neighbors will be invited to showcase their goods, services and community projects, and we will have maps available for a self-guided public art tour of the neighborhood.

We will hold two cleanup and groundskeeping events on May 12th and May 26th, from 12-2pm, to prep our site for painting and students for participating in a community build. Interested in a site tour and information about how to get involved during the VBC? Drop in! The installation and celebration are scheduled for June 1-2; all day on June 1st, and from 12-5pm on June 2nd. Community members at-large are welcome to our celebration, which falls on opening day of the VBC. Make us your first stop on your tour of North Portland VBC projects, because we will be handing out maps marked with all the rest. Our staff includes several local musicians, who will play a combined set, and we have invited the makers in our parent community to showcase their works, too; please stay tuned for the final schedule of arts & cultural programming as the date approaches.

Support our neighborhood elementary school’s newly renovated gardens. The raised bed garden for annual vegetables, perennial food forest and native pollinator meadow are for use by students, after-school programs like SUN and Girl Scouts and the community. Shop a variety of native plants for sun or shade.
Thursday, May 11, 3 to 6 pm

Portland’s first traffic calming Placemaking Project is at the foot of North Concord Ave at Overlook Blvd, next to the big painted intersection. Come re-plant and refresh the groundbreaking planter project with sedums and other ecoroof plants that are low care, low water, high heat, low profile AND pollinator friendly plants. Kids welcome! Make wattle fencing, try honey tasting and have a bee hive visit! Tour the established, 6-year old food producing permaculture site next to the planters, and have fun getting dirty: sheet mulching, installing barriers for cane berries, hugelkultur terrace construction and more digging and planting.

Opportunities to dig and take home some plants (until they run out): Shasta daisies, blue Japanese iris, white iris, black currants, red currants, blackberries (shuksan), raspberries, rhubarb. Bring a shovel and carry home container to dig your own.

Bring the kids! Dress for weather (raingear, or sunscreen and hat if the sun comes out!), and bring your gloves and hand tools if you have them (some available), and a water bottle. Snacks provided.

We had a fantastic turn out last week as neighbors within Overlook came together to Prepare Out Loud with The American Red Cross’ Steven Eberlein.

The afternoon was filled with tabling from organizations including Multnomah County’s Amateur Radio Emergency Service, Dove Lewis, PHLUSH (Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human) and Portland State University’s Center for Public Service.

Big thanks to Kenny & Zukes for a ton of donated bagels and shmears, Blend Coffee on N Killingsworth for donating coffee for the day, and to Atomic Pizza for providing a delicious pizza lunch. Also many thanks go out to the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) program operating out of Beach School, led by Cinda Jackson, who helped us to secure the venue once again this year. Every year we get stronger because of these tremendous partners!

Finally, one more quick note from Steven Eberlein and the Red Cross:

Mountain House has offered a two-week food supply available through the end of April –www.mountainhouse.com/redcross. The coupon code upon checkout is Redcross. Nearly $30 of every purchase supports the Red Cross, so we hope you’ll prepare yourself and support us at once.

City Club of Portland has recently released a draft report that looks at economic, environmental, and social resilience on the scale of our city, with an eye to preserving this special place despite the great threat of a Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) Earthquake that looms on the horizon. Here is a link to the report and a host of other information:

If you’re interested in how we can make Portland more resilient at a neighborhood scale, check out our upcoming Sustainability Summit on Saturday February 25 that will be focusing on how we can respond together after an event has taken place. Steven Eberlein from the American Red Cross will be on hand to deliver the keynote presentation. While the quest for resilience can help to ensure our long term sustainability, a short term benefit is that we get to become even more socially connected as a community and build our own self-reliance at the community scale. Hope to see you there!

East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District is offering two great workshops in the neighborhood this spring. Both will be held at Trillium Charter School.

Natural Gardening Workshop: Naturescaping
Saturday, Feb. 4, 2016 from 9 to 1 p.m.Trillium Charter School, 5420 N Interstate Ave
Registration is now open for this free and practical how-to workshop on how to make your yard eco-friendly.

Natural Gardening Workshop: Urban Weeds
Thursday, March 2, 2016,from 6:30 to 9 p.m.Trillium Charter School, 5420 N Interstate Ave
Registration is now open for this free and practical how-to workshop on weeds and how to identify them and how to effectively deal with them without pesticides.

Come join us this year to talk through how we will all respond when the unexpected strikes. While last year’s summit was focused on how to prepare as a household before disaster strikes, this year will focus more on the likely challenges and resources that we will see following an event such as an earthquake, extreme weather event, or other large scale incident. By mapping out a framework of neighborhood response, we will all benefit by knowing a bit of what we can expect along with the kinds of resources that will be available following a disaster.

Join Sustainable Overlook for an inspiring documentary right before the election.

Sunday, November 6th at the Lucky Lab Taproom on N. Killingsworth Ave.

Film starts at 7 pm. Discussion afterwards. Free! All are welcome. Food and drinks available for purchase.

This film produced by Helena Norberg-Hodge “features many voices from six continents calling for systemic economic change. The documentary describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. While government and big business continue to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power, people around the world are resisting those policies and working to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm: an economics of localization.” (Wikipedia)

“An award-winning documentary film, The Economics of Happiness, spells out the social, spiritual, and ecological costs of today’s global economy. Importantly, the film also highlights the many benefits of a shift towards the local, and showcases some of the steps people are already taking worldwide.” (Local Futures.org)

This year’s Yard Sale will be held on Saturday July 23. By registering here, your home will be included on an anonymous map that will be physically printable and made available online via Google Maps. This map will be advertised via the Oregonian and Craigslist so that visitors and neighbors alike can quickly identify each participating sale in Overlook. This helps boost traffic and makes everyone’s sales more effective.The Free Share will happen the next day on Sunday the 24th. Set out any items that didn’t sell the day before, and offer up as free to neighbors. As in years’ past, we’ll only advertise the yard sale, this way the free share is preserved as more of an open exchange of used items between neighbors.

This event is sponsored by Sustainable Overlook, a group of neighborhood volunteers interested in building community and resilience.